Olympian musings…7/28/2024
1 Path. When I park at my office the path I wore through the woods to my Mom’s facility is the first thing I see. Each day my first impulse is to determine if I’ll have time to walk that path for a quick visit. We would have had so much fun watching another Olympic Games together.
I am left to wonder when, if ever, I will look at that path and not see where it leads.
2 100. It has been 100 years since the Summer Olympics were last held in Paris. In an altogether typical French response, the Parisians left town and went on vacation.
3 Celine. Gotta give them credit though, the French know to throw a party. I mean, come on, 360,000 people stood in the rain, happily, because that OPening Ceremony show was simply fantastic. The hits just kept coming. Not gonna lie, the “specter” that ran through the whole shebang was more than a little bit creepy, but the final entry on horseback?! So. Good.
And then they go and top it off with Celine Dion just crushing a classic French anthem.
Thousands of athletes, some of them the wealthiest, most coddled jocks in history, stayed up and stayed out, many of them without so much as a Walmart disposable poncho, lest they miss a minute of the Ceremony. We were glued to the set.
Alons y!
4 2028. Los Angeles, CA, USA has been awarded the Summer Olympics in 2028, and Salt Lake City, UT, USA has been awarded the Winter Olympics in 2034. Admit it, you forgot that the next Summer Games were in the U.S. until the Salt Lake announcement was made. I sure did. Honestly, my first response was to start plotting and planning to return to Park City. We are such Olympics junkies in my family that we actually bought a home in Park City 6 or 7 years before the Games to ensure that we would have a place to stay (we later sold it when our kids were in school and we couldn’t gather to ski together).
I came by my fascination with the Olympics honestly. My Mom and Dad went to the ’84 Games in LA. In the days prior to digital cameras and cell phones my Dad took something like 10,000 photos, creating slide shows for the ages. Mom and Dad were swimming and gymnastics fans, but they went to the LA Games with the intent to see at least one competition in as many disciplines as they could. Heck, there were a couple hundred slides of their one and only equestrian competition where Dad scored front row seats.
Now that’s big time commitment!
My folks were in their late 60’s, I believe, when we took them to Utah. We tried to see as many events as we could. We were there to see Johnny Mosley’s famous “Dinner Roll”, live and in person! My folks found a way to enjoy the snowboard half-pipe, and we all fell in love with short-track speed skating. Especially the relay races! Crazy good.
I’d sure love to see another Olympics on home soil. I will be mid-70’s for the next Salt Lake City Games, but I am going to do everything possible to get myself and Beth to LA in ’28.
5 Hoopla. Men’s Olympic Basketball is the second biggest lock in team sports, right behind Great Britain in Eventing. Just kidding! The biggest lock in team sports at the Paris Olympic Games is the U.S. Women’s Basketball team. There are 12 women on the team and it seems like 10 of them will be first-ballot Hall-of-Famers. Bet the house, the ranch, the farm. They are a Dream Team, winners of the last, what, every Gold medal? Diana Taurasi is gunning for her sixth for goodness sake. SIX!
And yet, so many folks still obsess about the player who isn’t there.
There really is no one to whom one might compare Caitlyn Clark when it comes to the peculiarity of the Olympics roster. She is, indeed, wildly popular at the moment, but as a basketball player on the biggest professional stage–there are no amateurs in the modern Olympics Games–she really shouldn’t be in the conversation. Folks are invoking icons like Magic and Larry, but at this stage in her athletic career Ms. Clark arguably has more in common with Christian Laettner when it comes to the Olympic team (hoops cognoscenti will recall that a rather famous half-court game-winner made Laettner 12th man on the Dream Team). She is a wonderful player, blessed with not only incredible eye-hand coordination but a preternatural court sense that allows her to find teammates for open looks when none appear to be open. But like Laettner, she is unlikely to be the 12th best woman playing basketball in the United States at the moment.
Don’t get me wrong, I like Caitlyn Clark and I like her game. She’s fun to watch, both from the standpoint of a washed up suburban point guard and as a fan of good basketball. She reminds you a bit of a young Pete Maravich, no? Great handle, crazy passes out of nowhere, and just money as soon as she steps across half court. A part of the whole Olympics kerfuffle is that so many otherwise good-on-details pundits have been mixing up the powers that be in determining the Olympics roster, albeit with hilarious takes from some of them. Jason Whitlock took umbrage at the question of whose spot Clark could/should have taken: “The ‘who do you remove from the team?’ debate is comical. Like it matters. For the first time in American history, women have the biggest star in sports and they don’t know how to utilize her. This is high comedy. They’re all Tito. She’s Michael. Beat it.”
That’s good stuff right there, but it’s directed at the wrong folks. You see, it’s USA Basketball, not the WNBA, that’s responsible for selecting the team, and while they are certainly mindful of the need to promote women’s sports in general and basketball in particular, what they are charged with is winning a Gold Medal. Forgive me for picking on poor Mr. Laettner, but his impact on both game outcomes and the promotion of sport was infinitesimal. USA basketball made a call based on the history of the women who were long-time pros before Clark left college with the single-minded goal of Gold.
Jason L. Riley has a weekly opinion piece called “Upward Mobility” in the WSJ. He also conflates USA Basketball with the WNBA with regard to the Olympics roster, but to his credit he directs his comments about Ms. Clark’s importance to women’s basketball toward the WNBA. He does not address her impact in simple basketball terms, as one might have done with someone like Michael Jordan, but more like Larry and Magic, men who were never in the GOAT conversation but nonetheless were responsible for a huge increase in both the popularity of their game and the money the players made playing it. Caitlyn Clark will never be in the GOAT conversation, whether she ends her career more Larry or more Pistol Pete.
Her early influence on the popularity of both college and professional Women’s basketball leads Mr. Riley to the influence that Tiger Woods had on the PGA. During Woods’ reign PGA purses climbed from $68MM to $363MM per year, and golfers in the top 100 made much more money via endorsements. Can Clark do the same thing for the WNBA and the women who play in the league? Tiger overcame literally centuries of discriminatory history in the world of golf through what can only be described as sheer force of will. It can’t have been easy.
But what if it was? If he’d triumphed as completely as he did without any discrimination, elevated the game and the fortunes of all who played during his tenure as completely as he did and he was, I dunno, Doug Sanders, would it have been less meaningful to the sport? Again, don’t get me wrong, Tiger Woods triumph was built on the foundation built by pioneers like Ali and Robinson. In my opinion his broader achievements ARE greater than they would have been if he’d been Doug Sanders precisley because he wasn’t and he isn’t: Tiger Woods, as we all know, is Black.
Riley, also Black, pulls back the curtain on the underlying tension behind the rapid uptick in America’s interest in women’s basketball: Caitlyn Clark is White. Not only that, but unlike Woods she plays in a league where players are predominantly Black, and unlike the PGA a league where many of the brightest stars are gay. Clark, like Woods, is straight. Riley says all of the quiet parts out loud when he questions whether WNBA officials are up to the admittedly delicate task of balancing the already obvious quantitative benefits being reaped by Clark’s arrival (TV viewership up 3x; merchandise sales up 230%; games moved to bigger venues and sold out) with the reality of who she is and what she is not.
Jason L. Riley is to be commended for saying every bit of this.
For me I think there are three take homes from this, all of which can be, and are, true. First, pundits like Jason Whitlock and even Jason L. Riley should be a bit more on point with the WNBA/USA Basketball nuance. Rather than take the however easy but inaccurate shot at the WNBA just say what is: USA Basketball made a proper hoops call that Caitlyn Clark is not one of the 12 best U.S. women basketball players. Riley’s 11yo daughter leads us to conclusion number 2. A budding basketball player, she only started watching WOMEN’S basketball because of Caitlyn Clark. Who cares what Clark is and/or what she’s not. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a PGA golfer of the Tiger Woods era who bemoans the fact that Tiger is Black. Clark is bringing new fans, and new fans will bring new money for everyone.
The third truth? I have no idea who will be the next Tiger Woods. It took an awfully long time for Tiger to become the next Jack Nicklaus, and you could argue that we are still awaiting the next Arnold Palmer. But without Magic and Larry would Michael have had the same impact financially? The same impact growing the game? Would Michael have been, well, Michael?
There’s a certain rising sophomore basketball player on the USC women’s team who makes me think about Magic and Larry and Michael. Will she be who she might be without someone who builds the game so that it is big enough for who she might become when she arrives? I think Mr. Riley understands.
I’ll see you next week…
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